QUANTUM SUICIDE FICS
by Falcarius
Summary: A collection of short stories based on the upcoming visual novel Quantum Suicide. Can the crew members of the Everett survive DAI's twisted Deletion Game? Rated M for frequent violence and occasional innuendo. Reading the Kickstarter updates and/or playing the beta prologue beforehand is highly recommended.
1. Battle Royale

I woke up early, my stomach heavy with a mixture of lingering horror from yesterday's execution and growing dread of today's new Deletion Game.

No matter how many rounds I went through, the waiting never got any easier.

Knowing I wouldn't be getting back to sleep, I turned the lights on and checked the time readout on the wall.

Perhaps it wasn't as early as I thought. Any minute now, DAI would be-

DAI: Already up? You're no fun.

PROTAGONIST: Gah!

DAI: Awwww, you don't look happy to see me.

PROTAGONIST: Can we just get this over with?

DAI: Okay, grumpy-pants. I've got a very special surprise for you today...

PROTAGONIST: Oh boy. I can't wait.

DAI: Come along now, there's no time to waste!

...

PROTAGONIST: DAI, why are we in the Engineering Bay? Where's everyone else?

DAI: Surprise! You get a free pass this round!

PROTAGONIST: Wait, seriously?

DAI: That's right! You get to watch the other players compete from the safety of this room!

DAI swept her arm around, indicating the collection of holographic screens all over the room.

Each screen showed a different room or hallway of the ship. I spotted one displaying the Dining Hall, where the other crew members had already gathered.

My feelings of apprehension growing, I stepped back to the door of the Engineering Bay, but sure enough, it was locked.

PROTAGONIST: DAI, what are you...

DAI: Well, time to go reveal today's game to the lucky participants! Toodle-oo!

PROTAGONIST: DAI, get back here and tell me what's going on!

It was no use. DAI had already vanished.

I walked over to the screen showing the Dining Hall, which now contained DAI and several crew members... too many crew members, in fact.

Could this be true? It didn't make sense. What was going on?

DAI: I'm sure everyone's noticed by now, but I thought I'd make this round a little more interesting by restoring the players eliminated in earlier rounds.

Everyone was there. Even the victims of the previous Deletion Games. The ones whose executions I had been forced to watch. How could they be alive again?

NIKOLAS: What do you mean, "restore"? How is this possible?

DAI: You can't expect me to reveal all my secrets, can you? Now stop interrupting.

DAI: Anyway, after your rather disappointing performances in the last few rounds, I've decided to step things up a bit.

DAI: I've noticed a certain... fondness... towards a certain member of our happy little family recently.

DAI: So for today's very special round of the Deletion Game, I'm giving you a chance to show how much you care.

DAI: The rules are very simple: Last one breathing gets to have their way with [Protagonist]!

PROTAGONIST: WHAT!?

ALL: WHAT!?

PROTAGONIST: This is crazy! I didn't agree to this! Nobody else is going to agree to this! ...Right?

KIMIKO: This time you've gone too far, DAI! Executing single crew members was horrible enough, but now you're trying to kill us all at once!?

DAI: Well, technically, two of you would survive.

KIMIKO: That doesn't matter! Nobody's going to play this round. Nobody's getting killed!

DAI: Oh, silly me! I forgot to mention - if more than one of you is still alive in eight hours' time, [Protagonist] gets executed.

KIMIKO: Th-that doesn't change anything! No matter who it is, a single crew member's life is not worth the-

The Captain suddenly stopped talking. Even through the holographic screen, I could see a line of blood trickle from her mouth.

YOSHIKI: I'm sorry, Captain.

Yoshiki stepped back, tugging a screwdriver out of the Captain's neck.

YOSHIKI: I can't let [Protagonist] die, not when I haven't even confessed my feelings yet!

Captain Kimiko Yukimori's lifeless body crumpled slowly to the floor.

There was a moment of stunned silence, and then the Dining Hall erupted into chaos, everyone scrambling for the door.

Katashi ran straight for the kitchen, rummaging quickly through the utensils and selecting the most dangerous-looking ones.

But his choice of destination was too predictable. On another screen, I noticed a diminutive figure edging towards the kitchen door.

I shouted warnings at the screen, but I knew nobody would hear me. There was nothing I could do but watch.

As soon as Katashi opened the door, a unicorn-shaped backpack slammed into his face, knocking him to the floor.

SHIZUKA: [Protagonist] is mine! You hear me? ALL MINE!

Shizuka stabbed the horn of her unicorn backpack into Katashi's chest over and over. I turned away and covered my ears, but I could still hear the screams.

...

The next couple of hours were a nightmarish blur.

Vladimir drowning Shizuka... [Corrupt] strangling Yoshiki... Dr. Andreas pushing Vladimir into the matter recycler...

Before long, the only ones left were the Vogel twins.

NIKOLAS: I'm sorry, Beatrix. You know how much I love you... But I love [Protagonist] more.

BEATRIX: I understand, Nikolas. Believe me, I understand.

Before I could tell what had happened, Nikolas had plunged a syringe into Beatrix's neck.

He embraced her, crying, as the strength slowly drained from her body.

BEATRIX: But if I can't have [Protagonist], neither can you.

NIKOLAS: Wh...!?

Nikolas staggered backwards, his eyes widening in disbelief, and a scalpel protruding from his throat.

He bumped into a trolley and fell with a crash, medical instruments scattering around him. It looked as though he was trying to speak, but no words came.

As I sank to my knees in disbelief, DAI flickered into existence behind me.

DAI: Well, would you look at that? I guess I'm the winner!

I didn't hear her. I couldn't move, couldn't think.

I couldn't save them. They were all gone. Everyone I had ever known was gone.

...No. Not quite everyone.

DAI: Oh, I just can't wait to-

Without any warning, all the lights in the room went out. The video screens vanished, and DAI's sudden silence informed me that she too had disappeared.

In the dying glow of the power cells, I could just make out a tiny figure crawling out of a maintenance hatch, gripping a bundle of severed wires.

MELODY: I did it! I won the game!

With the ship's power gone, the oxygen was starting to drain from the room, but I didn't care. I just wanted it all to be over.

MELODY: Now we can be together forever!

MELODY: Ahaha... AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

...

I snapped awake, sitting bolt upright. What a dreadful nightmare... As if I didn't have enough to worry about today...


	2. Repercussions of Cake

Katashi Ikari waited. The lights above him blinked and sparked out of the air. There were aliens on the ship. He didn't see them, but had expected them now for years. His warnings to Capten Kimiko were not listenend to and now it was too late. Far too late for now, anyway.  
Katashi was an agricultural engineer for fourteen years. When he was young he watched the spaceships and he said to dad "I want to be on the ships daddy."  
Dad said "No! You will BE KILL BY ALIENS"  
There was a time when he believed him. Then as he got oldered he stopped. But now in the kitchen of the Everett he knew there were aliens.  
"This is Kimiko" the radio crackered. "You must fight the aliens!"  
So Katashi gotted his pottato launcher and blew up the wall.  
"HE GOING TO KILL US" said the aliens  
"I will spit at him" said the queen alien and she spat the acid blood. Katashi potatoed at her and tried to blew her up. But then the ceiling fell and they were trapped and not able to kill.  
"No! I must kill the aliens" he shouted  
The radio said "No, Katashi. You are the aliens"  
And then Katashi was a zombie.

* * *

 **Note:** This fic was originally written and published on April Fools Day. For those who don't understand the reference, it's a parody of Peter Chimaera's infamous fanfic 'DOOM: Repercussions of Evil'.


	3. Raised Stakes

There was no avoiding it any more.

It was absurd. It was unscientific. It went against everything I thought I knew. But the evidence was too overwhelming for me to continue denying it.

Bonnie Bradley was a vampire.

The weirdness had begun, sure enough, with the announcement of this round of the Deletion Game. We had all gathered in the Dining Hall at precisely 8:00am, just as DAI had told us, but the psychotic computer program was nowhere to be seen. The really bizarre part, however, was that everyone else did show up. EVERYONE else. Even the people who had died right in front of our eyes just days ago.

There were millions of questions, of course, but disappointingly few answers. As far as anyone could tell, these were indeed the same crewmates and family members who had been lost to DAI's nightmarish game. They remembered their lives on board the Everett, they remembered the unexpected discovery of my shuttle earlier this month, and they even remembered the horror of being condemned to execution. But none of them remembered actually dying; everything between their "deletion" methods being chosen and their rude awakenings by DAI an hour ago was a complete blank. Had DAI somehow faked their deaths as some sort of sadistic prank? Or had they really been resurrected?

In all the shock and relief and confusion, it took nearly half an hour before somebody thought to check the holographic terminal floating silently above the dining table. It was showing a message from DAI, but any hopes we had of a proper explanation were soon dashed. The message read simply,

"Surprise! Looks like your friends are alive again! But will they stay that way? In this round of the Deletion Game, you have just one task: survive until the end of the week. Survive what? I'm not telling! But I'll give you one hint: TRUST NO ONE.  
XOXO  
DAI"

At once, all of our relief turned to suspicion. Was there a darker explanation for the "revived" crewmates? For instance, could they be robots designed to look and act like the people we once knew? But their memories and personalities seemed so convincing... I remembered reading something about recent breakthroughs in neural scanning, but surely that would be beyond the Everett's capabilities... right?

Everyone spent the rest of the day on edge, myself included, but I didn't notice anything out of the ordinary. Nothing drew my attention to Bonnie - but then, given that she was normally kind of... strange, my brain probably would have tuned out any additional strangeness. At dinner, Beatrix suggested that we search the ship in hopes of figuring out exactly what danger we were supposed to "survive", but Yoshiki and Nathaniel decided they'd prefer to lock themselves in their rooms all night, and Captain Kimiko agreed. After all, DAI's message implied that the danger was one of us. On the whole, it was probably safer to isolate ourselves. Or so we hoped...

xxxxx

Somewhere deep in the bowels of the Everett, two rather unusual figures were talking.

"Do you think anyone knows?" asked the first. Even in the dark room, the silhouette's faint glow immediately identified it as DAI.

"Don't worry," said the second with a dark chuckle. "They have no idea..."

xxxxx

The next morning, Beatrix was dead.

Shizuka discovered the body in the EcoLounge shortly before breakfast, and her screams brought the rest of the crew running. When Nikolas saw his sister's corpse, the colour drained from his face and he just stood there, frozen in shock. Vladimir covered Melody's eyes, although she probably couldn't see anything from the back of the crowd anyway. I had been one of the first to arrive, along with Daniel and Katashi, so I'd already had some time to calm my nerves after the gruesome sight.

Beatrix's once-voluptuous body now seemed deflated, almost withered, as if a gigantic spider had drained all her fluids. For a moment, I wondered if DAI had actually released giant spiders onto the ship, but immediately dismissed the idea as ridiculous. DAI couldn't physically create anything, only manipulate what was already there. The culprit was almost certainly one of us humans.

Finally breaking out of his paralysis, Nikolas walked over to what was once his sister and quietly picked her up. Nobody stopped him as he began to carry her off, but he still paused to tell us that he was taking her body to the Medical Bay for an autopsy. Perhaps his reassurance was directed at himself more than us. I felt sorry for him, but I knew he was the only one qualified to do this.

Then, just as he walked past me, something caught my eye. Two tiny pinpricks, in the side of Beatrix's neck. My mind raced. It couldn't be. I'd read about the classical vampires - Dracula, Carmilla, von Count - but even as a child, I had never believed in such superstitions. Vampires were no more than a myth created by uneducated peasants and perpetuated by trashy novelists. There was no way a vampire could exist in real life, much less on this spaceship. Was there?

My eyes skimmed the crowd of onlookers, then settled on Bonnie. Pale-skinned, red-eyed Bonnie, who watched Beatrix's corpse pass her with an expression more like curiosity than horror. Or was it... hunger?

I shook my head to clear it. This was silly. I couldn't afford to be distracted by fantasies when there was a very real killer on board. For the moment, it would be better to regard the entire crew with suspicion. Including Bonnie.

We eventually made our way back to the Dining Hall for breakfast, but nobody had much of an appetite. Most of the crew finished up quickly and headed back to the safety of their rooms (presumably including Bonnie, who had disappeared when I wasn't looking). Many of us suspected that Beatrix had been searching the ship on her own when she died, and it was entirely possible that her murder had been a deliberate warning against such investigations. If we just stayed in our rooms, perhaps the mystery killer would let us be.

Of course, it wasn't quite that simple. For instance, the Captain still had to run the ship, Katashi still had to cook, Shizuka still had to... what exactly did she do, again? And all of us still had to go to the Dining Hall to eat, since Katashi wasn't exactly enthusiastic about the idea of bringing everyone their meals one by one.

Before long, we had all gathered back in the Dining Hall for lunch. No, not all of us. Nikolas was absent, perhaps still working on the autopsy. Vladimir was also missing, as were Elisabeth and Yoshiki... and Bonnie. Come to think of it, I didn't remember seeing her at lunch yesterday, either. Maybe she had a habit of skipping lunch?

"Or maybe she only comes out at night, because she's a vampire," whispered the paranoid side of my mind, but I chose to ignore it.

Fortunately, everyone showed up to dinner alive and unharmed. I could tell that a couple of them wanted to ask Nikolas about the autopsy results, but nobody felt comfortable bringing it up. He soon noticed their looks of curiosity, though, and saved them the trouble of asking.

"As far as I can determine, there are no external injuries on Beatrix's body other than a couple of minor bruises and two small puncture wounds near her right jugular. However, her circulatory system contains only seven percent of the amount of blood that would normally be expected for a woman of her build. The lack of bloodstains on her skin and clothing - and where the body was found, for that matter - indicate that the neck wounds were not sustained in an accident, but were deliberately inflicted with the aim of draining her blood. This would have been a very slow process, but I see no evidence of a struggle. I will need to perform further tests in order to..."

My mind reeled. Could it be true? Was Beatrix really killed by a vampire? I still wasn't ready to accept a supernatural answer, but why else would somebody drain her blood through her neck?

The clatter of cutlery pulled me out of my daze. Katashi was starting to dish out the soup. I watched as he continued around the table, until my eyes were once again drawn to Bonnie, who was staring at the soup with a suspicious look. She leaned over and sniffed it cautiously, then jerked back, turning even paler than usual.

"Is there garlic in this?" she asked Katashi.

"Yeah, I thought I'd play around with the recipe a bit today," he replied cheerfully.

"I, uh... I don't really feel hungry tonight. I guess this whole Beatrix thing is still affecting me. I'll see you guys tomorrow!" Bonnie stood up and quickly walked out of the room, leaving Katashi standing there with a disappointed look on his face.

"I told you so," my irrational side whispered.

This was getting ridiculous. It was time to settle this once and for all. "I'm not feeling hungry either," I announced, ignoring Katashi's crestfallen expression as I walked off after Bonnie. I didn't want to confront her directly, just in case she really was the mysterious killer, but I was prepared to stalk her all night if it meant proving her guilt or innocence.

I quietly tailed her through the ship's corridors, trying to act normal in case she turned around. If she did spot me, I could always tell her that I was on my way back to my room. She didn't know where my room was, right?

Fortunately, it didn't come to that. Bonnie strolled up to her room and disappeared inside without showing any signs of having noticed me. By sheer luck, her quarters were close to the baths, so all I had to do was wait on the other side of the bathroom door and watch her room... for hours on end... just in case anything happened.

I was beginning to regret this already.

...

After a couple of hours, I was more than ready to quit. Aside from a tense moment when the Captain walked past the bathroom, the corridor had been silent and empty the entire time. Maybe Bonnie wasn't the killer after all. Maybe she was just sleeping innocently in her room, and I was wasting my time here while the real killer was prowling around somewhere else. Maybe they were waiting to ambush me as soon as I left the bathroom. Maybe they were already lurking in here with me...

I scanned the bathroom quickly. Surely if the killer was in here, they'd have attacked me by now, right? But before my paranoia could convince me to start checking every nook and cranny, I heard the electronic beep that signalled a door opening. I spun around and peeked out into the corridor. Sure enough, there was Bonnie, moving stealthily and occasionally looking around to make sure nobody was watching. I ducked back inside, hoping she hadn't seen me. It was going to be harder to follow her this time, but this was too suspicious to ignore. I waited until she had turned the corner, then tiptoed quickly after her.

Her destination turned out to be Nikolas's room. After another check of her surroundings, she bent down and started whispering into the intercom beside the door. From my hiding spot around the corner, I couldn't make out what she was saying, but I heard Nikolas's door open shortly afterwards. I vaguely recalled something about vampires needing permission to enter people's houses, but the Everett could hardly be called a house. Did they need permission to enter individual rooms? I had no idea.

More importantly, what would happen to Nikolas? Was she planning to kill him so he couldn't continue his autopsy? I considered barging in on them, but if Bonnie really was the killer, I could be signing my own death sentence, and if she wasn't, I'd have to admit that I'd been stalking her. Then again, if I stayed where I was, I'd be completely exposed if anyone else happened to walk past. And could I really leave Nikolas to his fate? But was there anything I could do to stop a vampire?

My mental debate must have been going on for at least half an hour by the time I heard the door open again. I didn't want to peer around the corner in case Bonnie was looking in my direction, so I pressed myself against the wall and listened carefully. There was a brief murmuring, too quiet to make out, and then the sound of approaching footsteps. I hurried back towards the bathroom as quietly as I could, but then a thought struck me: What if Bonnie had got blood on her clothes and needed to wash it off? If she came in after me, I'd be trapped.

My pace and heartbeat quickened as I scanned the other doors in the corridor. All were locked. Maybe I could act casual and pretend I was on my way back to my room? No, it was getting too late for anyone to still be outside, and I really didn't want to risk facing Bonnie alone. That only left one option.

I broke into a sprint, hoping I could make it to the other end of the corridor before Bonnie turned the corner behind me. Ten metres... five metres... made it! I glanced back as I skidded around the corner, but I couldn't see Bonnie. She'd probably heard my frantic dash, though, so I couldn't afford to stand around. I started running again, and didn't stop until I reached the safety of my room.

...

I awoke from another of the nightmares that had been plaguing me recently. After everything that had happened in the past couple of weeks, it was hardly surprising that my dreams were so messed up. At least I was still alive...

The events of the previous night came flooding back to me. Of course. Nikolas. I had to find out what had happened to Nikolas. I changed into my uniform and headed out immediately, aiming for his quarters.

I'm not entirely sure why I decided to go via Bonnie's room. Perhaps I wanted to check whether the corridor was the same as it had been the night before, free of bloodstains or incriminating evidence. Perhaps my mind was on autopilot, having spent so much time around that corridor recently. I certainly wasn't expecting to meet Bonnie herself, so when her door opened just as I was walking past it, I must have jumped half a metre into the air.

"Something the matter?" she asked with a quizzical look, but I couldn't answer. I was frozen to the spot.

Amazingly, she didn't seem particularly suspicious of me, but my brain barely registered that fact. I was too focused on her room, or at least what I could see of it through the rapidly closing doorway. Specifically, what was sitting on top of her bed.

It was, without a trace of doubt, a coffin.

...

So here I was, sitting in the Dining Hall long after everyone else had left, finally forced to accept the fact that Bonnie Bradley was a vampire. My brain was in such turmoil that I could barely even remember how I'd got here. I remembered that Nikolas had shown up to breakfast, announcing that he'd made some errors in his autopsy and would have to perform another examination. He'd seemed paler than usual, and my fears were confirmed when he walked past my seat and I spotted the two telltale pinpricks in his neck. Nikolas had been turned.

Was this how the supposed victims of the Deletion Game had survived? Had they been vampires this whole time, and thus immune to death through conventional methods? But what about us normal humans? Had the games been rigged, or was it just chance that no humans had been selected for execution?

What if there weren't any humans besides me?

I pushed the thought aside. Obviously Beatrix and Nikolas used to be human, at the very least. Judging from all the secrecy, there were probably no more than a handful of vampires among the crew. I'd just have to surreptitiously check people's necks for bite marks when talking to them from now on.

So what was my next step? After how I'd acted this morning, Bonnie might well have figured out that I was onto her. I needed to stop her as soon as possible, before she got a chance to bite me. I needed to end her. It was kill or be killed.

But I was going to need some help. Bonnie spent most of the daylight hours shut away in her room, and I wouldn't be able to break her door lock on my own. I briefly considered asking DAI to override the lock, but I doubted she'd oblige, particularly as I hadn't even seen her in two days. Besides, if I was going to attack a supernatural monster, I wanted some corporeal backup.

I decided to try asking Captain Kimiko first. Surely she'd have the authority to override door locks? I found her room and reached out towards the intercom, but before my finger even reached the button, the door slid open. That was odd. I remembered how the Captain had offered to "make her quarters available to me" back in my first round of the Deletion Game, but the situation was rather different now. Besides, she wasn't even waiting for me at the door. She was sitting at her desk, and from the looks of it, she hadn't even realised I was there. I stepped inside and cleared my throat, wondering how I was going to explain the whole Bonnie thing to her.

Then I saw what she was working on.

For a moment, I thought I heard DAI chuckle mischievously, but it was quickly drowned out by the noise of the Captain jumping to her feet and shouting in panic.

"Wh- bu- gw- OUT! Get out!" She ran over and shoved me back out the door, then fixed me with an icy glare. "You will tell NOBODY what you saw just now. Understood? NOBODY."

"Okay," I squeaked.

"Good."

The door slid closed.

So it looked like the Captain wouldn't be helping me. Who else could I ask? For some reason, I had a feeling Shizuka knew how to crack the door locks, although I couldn't quite put my finger on how I knew that. She probably wouldn't be much help in physical combat, but I'd take whatever I could get.

When I asked Shizuka for help through the intercom, she let me in without any questions. Most of the crew seemed a lot less paranoid today, after the complete lack of incidents last night (at least, as far as they knew). Part of me was happy that Shizuka trusted me enough to allow me into her room so easily, but now was no time for emotions. I had a job to do.

"So, what did you want my help with? Does it involve unicorns?" Shizuka asked.

I sighed. Of course that would be her first concern. "No, it does not involve unicorns."

"Awwwwww. It's never unicorns. Just once, I wish someone could have a real problem involving unicorns, then I'd be able to use all my extensive unicorn expertise for something besides beating everyone at Unikorn Kombat and writing awesome fanfi- um, I mean, uh, scientific papers. On unicorns."

I rubbed my temples. Maybe asking Shizuka wasn't such a good idea after all. "It might involve vampires, though."

Shizuka's eyes lit up. "Really? Like, actual vampires? You know, I was actually reading this old novel recently, about this girl called Bella, who meets-"

"You know what, never mind," I interrupted, forcing a smile as I backed out of her room. "It's not such a big problem, I can probably handle it on my own..."

So much for that plan. Was there anyone else I could ask? I started walking towards the kitchen, but I'd only taken a couple of steps when I saw Vladimir turning the corner ahead of me. Worth a shot, I guess.

"Excuse me, would you be able to help me with something?" I asked him.

"How urgent is it?" he responded. "We're looking for Fred at the moment."

"Fred?" It took me a moment to remember that Fred was the name of that green dinosaur plushie Melody was always carrying around. Sure enough, Melody was following closely behind Vladimir, looking worried. Hadn't she lost the purple one recently? She really needed to take better care of those things.

"Oh, right. Don't worry, it's nothing important," I lied. I didn't want to get Melody involved in this fight if I could help it. Maybe I'd be able to ask Vladimir again later, if I hadn't found someone else to help me by then.

Who hadn't I asked yet? ...Of course, Yoshiki! With his engineering skills, he might be able to do something about the door lock, and he'd probably be more use in a fight than Shizuka, at least. I raced to Yoshiki's room to ask him, and like Shizuka, he let me inside without any questions. Convincing him that Bonnie was a vampire was a bit tougher, but after I explained everything I'd seen yesterday, he seemed to accept it.

"So, how are you planning to kill her?" Yoshiki asked in a low voice.

That was a good question. I'd been trying not to think about that part. "Let's see... What kills vampires, again?"

"Sunlight?" suggested Yoshiki.

"Great, except we're light-years away from any star, and the ship's lights obviously aren't killing her. What about garlic?"

Yoshiki paled visibly. "Uh, that could be a problem. Rations are low, and Katashi's been keeping a particularly strict watch on all the food after the last time I... er... liberated some. Hmmmm... does silver work on vampires?"

"Where are we supposed to find enough silver? Nobody uses silver cutlery any more, and I don't exactly have a lot of jewellery."

"Good point. I suppose holy water's out of the question too."

I reluctantly brought up the only other method I could think of. "I guess there's always a stake through the heart..."

"That... might work, actually," Yoshiki said thoughtfully. "I think some of the gardens in the EcoLounge use wooden stakes. Of course, you'll still need to get past Katashi..."

"I'll deal with Katashi," I reassured him, standing up. "Meet me in front of Bonnie's room in half an hour, and bring a hammer. It's time to end this."

...

As it turned out, I didn't even need to 'deal with Katashi'. I just walked into the EcoLounge and took two stakes while he was busy in the kitchen. I'd at least expected DAI to set off some sort of alarm, but maybe she was feeling sympathetic. Or something. I had no idea what she was thinking, to be honest. At any rate, I had plenty of time to wait for Yoshiki. Plenty of time to try to come to terms with the fact that I was about to murder someone.

"She's not human any more," insisted part of my mind. "You'd be saving others. You'd be saving yourself."

It didn't help much.

Eventually Yoshiki turned up, carrying a toolbox and a small mallet. It only took him a minute or two of tinkering before the door beeped open. We crept inside, hoping Bonnie was asleep and hadn't heard anything. Sure enough, there she was, resting peacefully inside the ornate coffin on her bed. I took the mallet from Yoshiki and raised it above my head with a trembling hand, while my other hand positioned a stake over her heart. It had all come down to this. I took a deep breath to steady myself...

...And Bonnie's eyes snapped open.

"Whoa! Hey! What are you doing!?" She scrambled away from the stake, sitting up at the far edge of the coffin.

"Prepare to die, vampire!" I shouted, trying not to show how much she'd taken me off guard.

"What? Vampire? What are you talking about?"

"It's no use playing dumb. I know what you've been up to! You're the vampire who's been attacking the other crew members!"

"Wait, what? No! Why would you think I'm a vampire?" Bonnie looked utterly lost.

"YOU SLEEP IN A FREAKING COFFIN!"

"Oh... right." She seemed slightly embarrassed. "You might not have noticed, but I have a certain... fascination with death. I'm kind of like a Goth, although it's not quite the same thing. Sleeping in a coffin helps bring me closer to the other side."

"Well, how do you explain last night? I saw you sneak into Nikolas's room to bite him!"

"Ah." Her blush grew much more noticeable. "That. Um. Yeah. Look, I'd really rather you didn't tell anyone this, but I've been... uh... 'comforting' Nikolas after what happened to his sister."

"But I saw the bite mark on his neck!"

"Oh, I didn't realise I'd been quite that rough..."

I could feel my own face starting to turn red. "So, um, why do you sleep during the day?"

"I'm kind of a night owl."

"Your white skin?"

"Makeup."

"Garlic?"

"Hate the stuff."

My head was spinning. Had I really just attempted to murder an innocent person based on such flimsy evidence? "Then who killed Beatrix?" I yelled in desperation.

"No idea. I've been trying to figure that out myself. But I'm pretty sure it wasn't a vampire. After all, everyone knows vampires don't exist."

I could barely hide my shame and embarrassment. "Oh gosh, I am so sorry about this. I, uh, I should go." I quickly excused myself from Bonnie's room before I could humiliate myself any further.

So all this had been a gigantic waste of time? What was I supposed to do now? How was I supposed to find Beatrix's killer? "Hey Yoshiki-" I began.

And then it hit me. Who else had been missing at lunch? Who had been opposed to searching the ship? Who had believed me about vampires existing, but failed to give me any useful suggestions for killing them? Who was wearing a collared shirt that hid his neck? Who was standing behind me right now?

I tried to turn around. I tried to shout a warning to Bonnie. But before I could move, I felt Yoshiki's fangs sink into my neck, and my mind went blank...


End file.
